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Programming Language Theory: Difference between revisions
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* <tt>succ ≡ λn. λf. λx. f (n f x)</tt> (β-equivalent to <tt>(plus 1)</tt> for a defined <tt>1</tt>) | * <tt>succ ≡ λn. λf. λx. f (n f x)</tt> (β-equivalent to <tt>(plus 1)</tt> for a defined <tt>1</tt>) | ||
* <tt>mult ≡ λm. λn. λf. n (m f)</tt> (from f<sup>(m * n)</sup> = (f<sup>m</sup>)<sup>n</sup>) | * <tt>mult ≡ λm. λn. λf. n (m f)</tt> (from f<sup>(m * n)</sup> = (f<sup>m</sup>)<sup>n</sup>) | ||
The Church booleans take two arguments, and evaluate to one of them: | |||
* <tt>true ≡ λa. λb . a</tt> | |||
* <tt>false ≡ λa. λb . b</tt> | |||
Common syntactic sugar: | Common syntactic sugar: | ||
* Left-associative application as implicit parentheses | * Left-associative application as implicit parentheses | ||
Revision as of 05:52, 7 December 2009
Applicative/Functional Programming
Expressions compose functions rather than values. Backus proposed three tiers of complexity in his Turing Award lecture:
- Simply functional language (fp): No state, limited names, finitely many functional forms, simple substitution semantics, algebraic laws
- Formal functional system (ffp): Extensible functional forms, functions represented by objects, translation of object representation to applicable form, formal semantics
- Applicative state transition system (ast): ffp plus mutable state and coarse-grained operations thereupon
Untyped λ-calculus
Two operators (function definition and application) upon one operand type (λ-expression).
- Function definition: (λformalparam. body)
- Function application: function(actualparam)
The integers (or any countably infinite set) can be represented via the Church encoding:
- n ≡ λf. λx . fnx
- plus ≡ λm. λn. λf. λx. m f (n f x) (from f(m + n)(x) = fm(fn(x)))
- succ ≡ λn. λf. λx. f (n f x) (β-equivalent to (plus 1) for a defined 1)
- mult ≡ λm. λn. λf. n (m f) (from f(m * n) = (fm)n)
The Church booleans take two arguments, and evaluate to one of them:
- true ≡ λa. λb . a
- false ≡ λa. λb . b
Common syntactic sugar:
- Left-associative application as implicit parentheses
- Use of definitions (allowing identifiers to stand in as λ-expressions)
- Currying: (λx, y. x + y) rather than (λx. (λy. x + y))
- Numeric literals rather than Church encoding
